Michigan relics
The Michigan relics were a series of supposedly ancient artifacts that appeared to prove that people of an ancient Near Eastern culture had lived in the American state of Michigan. However, they were actually archaeological forgeries. In 1890, James Scotford of Edmore, Michigan, claimed that he had found a number of artifacts, including a clay cup with strange symbols and carved tablets, with symbols that looked vaguely hieroglyphic. He put them forward as evidence that people from the Near East or Europe had lived in America. The find attracted interest and also eager looters who arrived to look for more artifacts. Scotford joined forces with Daniel E. Soper, former Michigan Secretary of State, and together they presented thousands of objects made of various materials, supposedly found in 16 counties all over Michigan. They included coins, pipes, boxes, figurines and cuneiform tablets that depicted various biblical scenes, including Moses handing out the tablets of the Ten Commandments. On November 14, 1907, the Detroit News reported that Soper and Scotford were selling copper crowns they had supposedly found on heads of prehistoric kings, and copies of Noah's diary. Scotford often arranged a local person to witness him "unearthing" the objects. In 1891, Professor Albert Emerson came out to the sites to get a better look at the "artifacts" that he called "bad enough in the photograph... an examination proved them to be humbugs of the first water." In 1892, Professor Francis W. Kelsey, professor of Latin and Literature at the University of Michigan, along with Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., librarian and professor of Semitic languages at the University of Pennsylvania, assessed the languages found on the objects. Kelsey and Jastrow deemed the Michigan Relics frauds containing a "horrible mixture" of jumbled ancient scripts.7 The consensus among most all early scholars who assessed the relics was that they were archaeological forgeries, based on the following evidence: *The hieroglyphs were stamped cuneiform characters in random order. *The figures on some of the discoveries included lions with no tails, an omission which would not have occurred by "primitive" artists. *The clay items were dried on a machine-sawed board. *The objects disintegrated in water, indicating that they could not have been buried in the ground for very long. Archaeologists and historians continually concluded that the objects were forgeries. On July 28, 1911, professor Frederick Starr of the University of Chicago declared in the Detroit News that the so-called relics were fakes. Mary Robson, who lived in a room next door to Scotford's sons Percy and Charles, stated that the boys manufactured more "relics" all the time. In 1911, Scotford's stepdaughter signed an affidavit in which she stated that she had seen him making the objects and when she denied their validity he threatened her life. While most scholars and academics have determined that Scotford was the craftsman and Soper was the salesman, and the men joined forces for personal financial gain, neither man ever confessed and remained active in the business until their respective deaths in the 1920s. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints kept 797 of the objects in the Salt Lake City Museum. In 2003, they gave them up to the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing where they currently reside. More information on the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_relics. A website on the items is here http://www.chadstuemke.com/michigan-relics/ Category:Archaeological forgeries Category:19th century